


that we whisper

by Lvslie



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Badass Rose versus Grumpy Doctor, Cuddling & Snuggling, F/M, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Nightmares, a cup of disgusting beverage, bed sharing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-20
Updated: 2017-08-20
Packaged: 2018-11-03 01:37:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,105
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10956990
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lvslie/pseuds/Lvslie
Summary: “Doctor, drink your bloody milk with bloody honey or I swear I’ll bloody make you do it.” Sternly.Night-time conversations with Rose Tyler can be rather dangerous, the Doctor finds. Especially if one is rather confused after a particularly visceral dream.





	that we whisper

**Author's Note:**

> i combined an anonymous prompt 'i wish we could be more than this' it with @flourishandblotted‘s prompt 'stay with me, like this'  
> i hope you enjoy! xx

 

The first scream cuts through the drowsy air, echoes down the corridor.

Air leaves Rose’s lungs. Sleepiness is electrocuted from her body, or so it seems. She drops the tea mug onto the grating, tea spilling over with a wet splash.

“Doctor!”

She takes off running—unsure whether she’s picked the right direction, but led by her almost infallible sense of intuition and the TARDIS’s shimmery lights twined snugly with the coral struts. Round the first bend, she roughly collides with an unfamiliar door. It’s blue, marked with concentric circles. Breathless, she gropes for the handle.

“Doctor!”

There’s no coherent answer but a drawn out whine and what sounds like a sob.

“I’m here! I’m here!” Rose shouts helplessly, fumbling with the handle. “Oh, will you HELP,” she growls at the ceiling. The lights flicker, the door stops putting up a fight. She falls face-first into the room.

It smells of the Doctor—there’s no other way to describe it. A fleeting, alien, hardly describable scent, intensified to a dizzying level as it hangs in the somewhat stuffy air. Tangerines, Rose has once thought, or wet grass in the summer. And maybe dry paper. But most likely, not at all.

At first, as she picks herself up from the soft carpet, she finds it difficult to make out anything in the wan streak of light pooling from the ajar door. But the violent twitches and ragged, sharp intakes of wet breath give him away: the Doctor is curled up in a foetal position, under something akin to a rugged blue blanket, looking small and vulnerable on a giant circular bed.

Without another thought, Rose rushes forward.

“Doctor?” she whispers, kneeling by the bed and reaching out. At the sound of her voice, he stirs more violently and starts crying—audibly, without restraint, like a small child—shoulders and back trembling, hair damp from sweat.

And for a moment, Rose is too scared to move—paralysed by the sheer impossibility of the man in front of her in a context like this, the wrong _quality_ of it. Such overwhelming vulnerability of someone she believes with all her trustful heart to be fearless.

For a split of second, she falters.

Then she lunges forward and does the only thing she can possibly think of.

She tugs him firmly towards her, sneaking her arms underneath him, trying to flip him over. He’s tense to the point of breaking, unwilling to change position, but Rose is _determined_ and more than a little skilled in helping out her drunk mates. She pulls his damply tussled head into her neck and wraps herself almost entirely around him, cooing meaningless reassurances somewhere by his ear.

“Shh, shh. It’s alright. Hey, it’s alright. I’m here. Rose, remember? I’m here. It’s alright, Doctor. You’re safe.”

He’s shaking so violently she has to propel them against the bed not to fall over. But gradually, the half-sobs subside into equally damp heavy breathing. She feels his muscles go limp, and she doesn’t let go, hearing her own heart hammer in her chest.

It’s dark. The frail scattering of intrusive light from the corridor makes her hands splayed on his back look blue. She tries to calm her breathing.

The Doctor inhales sharply, his entire body jerking. “Rose,” he croaks damply.

She tightens her arms around him, fingers bunching in his shirt. “I’m here,” she repeats, almost inaudibly. “You’re okay.”

He’s quiet now, heaving somewhat uneven but deeper breaths, still tense—but she senses that he’s gaining more and more awareness with each second. Irrationally, she suddenly feels scared, convinced he will push her away if she dares linger a second too long—angry that she has presumed she was allowed to. So she pulls away, slightly, angling her face to look into his.

“Doctor?”

He’s ghastly pale—there seems to be no blood in his face, just a sheen of sweat and those enormous, dark eyes that have never looked older to her. And never looked younger.

She touches his collarbone lightly with her fingertips. Runs them up his sideburn, along the jawline. “Are you alright?”

For a moment, something distant flares in his gaze, something vaguely familiar. For a moment, she is convinced he will utter an annoyed, “yes” and launch into a scornful lecture.

“No,” he says, voice brittle and choked. “No.”

Almost involuntarily, or so it seems, he closes his eyes and leans forward, forehead pressing into her neck, breath coming out shaky once again as he apparently tries to suppress another sob. “ _No_.”

Rose’s heart constricts. Her hand sneaks around his neck, pulling him even closer.

“What happened?” she ventures quietly, “Was it … was it a nightmare?”

That’s when he he snaps out of it.

He goes rigid. Withdraws, letting her hand slide down his back as he stiffly sits up.

There’s something about his face she can’t read at first. It’s like he’s shut off the display, frozen in a tense expression of deep scrutiny, eyes fixed on her face, jaw set tight. But it’s not hostility. No—if anything, Rose thinks, it’s like ill-concealed and overwhelming fear.

His voice doesn’t confirm the emotion his features betray.

Drily, almost accusingly, he states, “This room was supposed to be soundproof. That was the whole point of this room.”

Rose’s heart flutters at the implication. Some blood seems to find its way back to her fingertips. It suddenly feels as though she’s subconsciously entered a new stage; the previous one was easy. Now—would come the time to face the real issue.

“Well,” she says, bracing herself, “then it failed, big time.”

Silence.

“How often has this been happening?” she demands, staring him straight into the eyes.

The Doctor is unfazed. Unmoving. “Doesn’t matter.”

Rose opens her mouth to retort and say something along the lines of, _it bloody well does matter_ , but he cuts her off, sharply.

“Rose, you shouldn’t have … You should probably leave now.” His face remains impassive, cold, but it’s a poor imitation of his usual sternness, drenched in sweat and dreary light, marred by the broken expression of his eyes. “Go back to sleep. I will be—I’m fine. You shouldn’t have come here. I’d … I’d rather you left. Please.”

Rose hesitates. Narrows her eyes. His face is painfully tense, like he’s been utterly focused on the seemingly impossible task of successfully getting her out of his room and is now anxiously awaiting his verdict.

Finally, she says, “Alright.”

She rises to her feet. If his shoulders slump a little—just a notch, no more—it’s hardly noticeable. Unnoticeable, perhaps, to anyone that isn’t her.

“Alright,” she repeats dispassionately, before swivelling to leave.

If he sighs, it’s a very quiet sigh.

…

It’s not three full minutes before she’s back, bare feet padding on the carpet. He’s been sitting limply with his face buried in his sticky hands, and now he jerks into an alert position.

She’s standing in front of him, cutting out against the dim light in her skimpy pyjamas, looking thoroughly unimpressed.

She’s holding a steaming mug and a banana.

Something large and lumpy rises in his throat.

“Rose—”

“Shut it,” she says flatly and thrusts the mug into his unsuspecting hands. “Drink up.”

Almost mechanically, he takes a sip and promptly spits the syrupy liquid back into the mug. As though woken up, he attempts to defend his already compromised stance, aiming for a stern voice, “Rose, I don’t think—”

But her voice is much more forceful than his. “You’re _shaking_ ,” she points out mercilessly, expression inscrutable. “You’ve been screaming and crying and I had to rock you back and forth and coo to get you to calm down. If you really think for a single moment that I could see you like that and just leave you be, you’re much thicker than I thought. And I _thought_.”

In spite of himself, he gives her a hint of scoff.

She doesn’t as much as blink. “Drink. Up.”

Somewhat dejectedly, he does. After a moment of drinking her absolutely disgusting beverage, he collects enough self-control to try and win over his position as a leader again.

(But he barely has the will to stop his hands from shaking to the degree at which he will not spill the contents of the mug all over himself.)

“Rose, you don’t—”

“Doctor, drink your bloody milk with bloody honey or I swear I’ll bloody make you do it.” Sternly.

He drinks the milk without another wince.

In the meantime, Rose plonks down next to him on the edge of the bed and starts talking in a mild, non-intruding voice, almost conversationally.

She talks about Mickey getting mumps and herself, aged eleven, getting chicken pox, and talks about a bleeding bruised knee and Jackie’s horrid medical practices and ruthless quarantines. She bumps her leg with his gently, smiles at him, taps her fingers on his arm.

He feels thoroughly undeserving of those small and precisely calculated ministrations, but his body betrays him: the rigid cold within him begins to dissipate and melt. He feels dizzy.

Weakly, he utters a small, “Thank you.”

Rose nods, lips pursing. She’s studying him very carefully now.

The Doctor sighs, “I’m sorry I snapped at you. It’s just … this is embarrassing.”

Rose’s expression doesn’t change. “Is it?”

“Isn’t it?” he echoes, almost automatically.

Rose surprises him by reaching out to brush a damp streak of hair out of his forehead. “I don’t think so, no,” she says quietly. “I think it’s very … _human_.”

He snorts. “I’m not human.”

“You think I don’t know that?” Rose smiles. “You’re not as different from us as you like to make it look, though. Not really.”

She’s wrong, he thinks, deeply and thoroughly. But the notion behind his certainty is woven from an intricate net of complex arguments that would need recalling and he’s immensely tired, heavy in his head and limbs. He doesn’t want to argue. He doesn’t want to _think_.

He swallows audibly, suddenly overcome with the familiar whelm of unspeakable affection for her.

Rose seems unaware. “Are you going back to sleep now?” she asks gently.

He physically shudders at the thought. “No,” he says roughly. “It’s … I’ve had enough.”

“But you’re still … twitchy,” she points out, dabbing him in the arm. “And I know you only get this twitchy when you don’t get enough sleep.”

“What a Sherlock,” he teases half-heartedly.

“Duh.”

For a moment, he hopes she’s sensed his unwillingness and dropped the subject, aiming for mild banter and a blissful pretence of not remembering what has just happened.

Then she asks him about the nightmares.

Something in his gut tightens.

“They happen … sometimes. It’s mostly the war. Sometimes just Gallifrey. Dying. Yeah, death’s the prevalent theme here. And uh, blood—on my hands, mostly. Sometimes everywhere else. Sometimes a bit of smoke.”

“Sometimes?” Rose queries softly.

He winces. “Well, when I say sometimes, I mean often. Well, when I say often—that is, every time. When I sleep, I mean. Hate sleeping, me.”

He’s talking too much, too fast for his woozy, exhausted state of mind—revealing way too much of himself to her that he’d like to admit. But he can’t help it, too weak to intervene.

Rose is frowning now, “And you didn’t think to have me try and help you?”

He smiles without humour, shakes his head. “No, Rose, it’s … it’s my own … thing. Issue. Not yours.”

And as usually, she is the uncanny, _take-you-off-guard_ kind of perceptive. And blunt. “You mean, you want to have them.”

He tenses. “I didn’t say—”

She’s not fooled. “Why?”

He dawdles a couple of seconds. Stares at his palms. Swallows.

Finally, “It’s penance.”

“Penance?” She sounds genuinely surprised. Incredulous, even. “What for?”

He grits his teeth. “Everything. I need to … I need to atone for it, somehow. What I’ve done. Who I’ve … for everything. There’s no other way. I get to live. They didn’t.”

She’s silent. He thinks, with a blasphemous amount of sadness, that he’s most likely finally managed to scare her off.

“You know what you _really_ need?” Rose says suddenly. “A hug.”

He blinks at her. She nudges his arm.

“C’mon,” she says invitingly, “have a cuddle.”

He opens his mouth to say something, but his mind is mysteriously blank. She opens her arms at him.

The warmth of her feels unholy against his skin.

And then she’s pushing him forcefully backwards, so that he’s lying flat, caught off guard once again. And before he can protest, she’s tugging at his old blanket and squirming to get them both underneath.

“What are you doing?” he demands.

“Tucking you in.”

“But I’m getting up,” he says faintly.

“The hell you are.”

“Rose, _no_ —look, I won’t be able to fall asleep either way,” he tries to reason with her, impatience slowly replacing surprise.

“Bollocks,” she says hotly, and it shuts him up. “You _always_ do when I’m close to you. It’s like a bloody charm, I scoot closer, an’ you’re out in a tick. If it weren’t for the fact you’re alien and all that, it’d find it pretty insulting.”

His traitor of a mouth hastens to counter her idea.

“It’s not _insulting_. It’s—that’s because I feel safe enough to—I mean, I don’t. I … What I mean is, Time Lords tend to accommodate and attune their circadian cycles to—”

“No, I get it,” Rose says amiably, grinning. “You feel safe so you sleep. You … cat, you.”

“No,” he says sternly. “Not a cat.”

“Of _course_ a cat. Look, you get sleepy when you feel warm ‘n secure, you like to be petted and fussed over and you even … purr.”

He nearly chokes. “What!”

“Yes, you do, you make those little growly noises when I touch your hair and—”

Dread wells up in his throat.

“Rose, I have never—”

“Aw, come on, don’t make it look like I’ve ... ruined your image or _whatever_. You can play the bad cop Time Lord all you want in front of, like, people. _And_ aliens,” she goes on ruthlessly. “But deep down, I think we both know you’re a soppy drowsy teddy bear.”

He fervently wants to disagree and throw in something about a cold-blooded murderer of his own kin, but he’s currently nestled snugly beside her, wrapped in a blanket and snuffling in the vaguely floral scent of her shampoo. And his eyelids feel _supremely_ heavy.

“You’re evil,” he manages.

“Sure I am, teddy.”

She writhes in under the blankets—and promptly tenses up. He grows tense as well, deeply unsure of what exactly she has encountered.

“Oh my God, are you …” Rose pauses. “Are you sleeping in your bloody _suit_?

“I—”

She looks at him with a blank face. “Doctor, get out of those horrid trousers.”

He lets out a very unmanly squeak. “No!”

“Get out of them!”

After approximately sixty more seconds of fierce battling, he loses the fight—and performs a series of awkwardly restrained movements, fully hidden under the blanket, to finally throw the offending garment away.

And find Rose staring at him with something very much like pity in her eyes.

He tries to squirm away but somehow results in kicking her leg with his foot.

She hisses in a breath, “Ouch, your feet are cold.”

Hers are _warm_. He feels dizzy. Chokes out, “I’m sorry.”

Rose ignores him, shuffling closer with her treacherous warmth and dreadfully exploratory legs.

“Well, aren’t you fuzzy, too,” she says pleasantly.

The Doctor is apoplectic. “I’m—”

“You say you’re sorry once more and I swear, I’m gonna kick you.”

He closes his mouth. Rose nudges a warm leg between his. “This’ll warm you up.”

He doesn’t feel sleepy now. Just faint.

“Ro—”

She cuts him off, “Answer me this, though. Nightmares aside, why on earth would Time Lords despise sleeping? It’s, like—the best thing.”

Reluctantly, he does as told. “They didn’t. Just didn’t need it. _I_ do—never liked it. So much going to waste. So much time.”

She rolls her eyes. “Come on, you have _plenty_ of time.”

Suddenly annoyed, he snaps, “Well, _you_ don’t.”

Rose falls silent. A splinter of reason crams itself back into his skull.

Oh, what is he doing with her. What is he—what is he even _doing_.

“Wait, so _that’s_ what it’s about?”

“That’s what what’s about?” he asks weakly.

Rose is evidently thinking hard. “The morning thing—how you hate when I’m sleeping late. You’re … freaking out that I’m gonna die so soon?”

“Well—maybe,” the Doctor hedges. “Somewhat. Uh, mostly.”

“Doctor …”

“Rose,” he says heroically, bracing himself, “you’re asking dangerous questions. Very … inconvenient. I’d honestly rather—”

She narrows her eyes. “You’re _answering_ them.”

Damn.

“It’s the milk,” he whines.

Rose quirks an eyebrow. “What, you got so high on the milk you can’t stop yourself?”

“Ye—what, _no_. No, it’s—I’m all tired and … and … Rose, you shouldn’t be here,” he declares desperately. “This, this all, this is wrong. Heretical! I’m 904 years old—I’m _ancient_. I remain continuously subject to the trans-shifting matrix of spatial chrono-zone awareness, I’ve … I’ve killed and manipulated multiple times and indulged in many an unconventional paradox … I sense the vibrations of timelines, all around you, and you’re this single frail … _strand_ of pure existence, and honestly it’s like I’m pulling at it with my hideous calloused fingers and some day it will snap and you won’t …”

“I’m not a bloody _strand_ , you big-headed idiot,” Rose interjects, sounding, all of the sudden, much too exasperated for someone who’s cuddling him under a scruffy blanket.

Then she adds, in a less heated voice, “And your fingers certainly aren’t hideous.”

He’s growing exasperated as well. “Rose, that’s not the point.”

“What’s the point, then?” she demands. “That I’m a lowly human?”

“There’s nothing lowly about being human,” he deflects at once.

“Well, there we are then! So stop fussing.”

“But this is—this is—”

“What? Embarrassing? Humili—wait, are you _uncomfortable_ with … this?”

“With what?”

“With the … touching and …”

Her voice suddenly grows much softer and she leans away from him, eyes full of awfully genuine concern. “Look, if something I’m doing makes you feel uncomfortable or it’s out of your … tolerance zone, I’ll stop. Or leave. Whatever boundaries you need me to respect, I will. I promise.”

 _Ah_. There it is. A way out. But suddenly, he can’t bring himself to pick it, craft the lie he’d later have trouble recalling.

“No,” he sighs, feeling defeated. “It’s just _very_ inappropriate.”

There’s a rapt silence.

He stares at his ceiling, futilely trying to count all the angles within the Gallifreyan alphabet.

“ _Is_ it?”

He smacks his lips, careful as to not look at her. “It _kind_ of is.”

It’s her turn to sound profoundly mortified now. “Oh, God. Doctor, I swear I didn’t mean to—I didn’t—”

“It’s not that you didn’t,” he says sullenly, still staring at the circles. “It’s more that I wouldn’t mind if you did.”

Another silence.

“You—what?”

He sighs.

“Oh.” Her voice sounds rather choked. “That’s … news.”

He instantly feels bad for dumping it on her. Bad, and wrong, and vile. He’s acutely aware of the sticky sweat clinging to his skin, flooding his mind with the images from the nightmare. He clenches his jaw. “I’m sorry.”

Rose props herself up on her elbow and gives him an incredulous look. “Whatever for?”

“Just—everything. God, Rose, _everything_. That I … it’s the … _milk_. I shouldn’t have said anything.”

Rose’s tone regains a hint of its usual bite, the surprise wearing off. “So the milk made you wish I’d try an’ get inappropriate with you?”

“I never said _wish_ —”

“Alright, you implied that milk's made you wish I—”

“That wasn’t … milk.”

She heaves a sigh. “I know that wasn’t the milk, Doctor. I just … I don’t get what you’re so sorry for. Honestly, I don’t.”

He wrings his hands helplessly, rising from among the blanket.

“Because this is … inappropriate!” he gestures between them. Rose quirks an eyebrow once again, looking pointedly at his neatly buttoned oxford.

“Vastly,” she mutters.

“Inappropriate for me, to … to think like that,” he continues plaintively. “ _Vastly_. Disgusting even. To … to think that I would dare to … when you’re so … so very … and for such a _frail_ moment, too. You’re so _young_ , Rose. And I’m—I’m not supposed to. _It's unthinkable.”_

She studies him for a while, biting her lip. Then, impulsively, she leans forward and kisses his cheek.

He blinks, stunned.

She says, “It’s not disgusting. At all.”

And before he can protest, she develops. “Besides, who exactly is going to judge you? The TARDIS? _My mum?_ ” 

He flinches. “Rose—” 

“Mickey? Sarah Jane? Or no, wait, maybe some of those folks whose lives we save daily will scrunch their noses and say ‘oh, but those heathens must be living in sin!’ and you will … what, feel bad?” She chews on her lip. “I sure won’t. For _what_? For doing something that would make you happy?”

He sighs and closes his eyes.

“Rose, it’s not that easy. I _wish_ it was that easy. God, I wish it could—” 

She disregards him.

“Now I _would_ get it if I were kicking and screaming that you’re the last thing in the whole Milky Way that I’d ever want to touch me and you’d, like, keep coming onto me in spite of my helpless cries.”

“Rose—”

“Honestly, _then_ I’d get it. That would be hell inappropriate.” 

She exhales and stretches idly, her leg sliding downward his calf in a languidly thrilling motion that drives him somewhat breathless, and questioning whether it could have been genuinely unplanned. 

“S’not like that, though,” she muses.

And at once, even limited to this fairly unromantic sentence and even less romantic collection of circumstances, her voice mysteriously acquires a whole range of painstakingly suggestive undertones.

He throttles the urge to growl, remembering her earlier cat simile. 

A thought swirls into his head: his favourite evasion to apply to their arrangement— _not exactly a romantic situation, not remotely a platonic one._  

Well, the Doctor thinks sourly, as he watches the gentle rhythmic rise of of Rose’s chest as she looks at him with her vibrantly alive eyes, there has been a definite swing. And all thanks to his weekly dose of night terror.

“Do you want to?”

Her somewhat vulnerable voice snaps him out of his reverie.

“What?” 

“Do you want to,” she suddenly trails off, uncharacteristically flustered, “um. Touch me?”

For a moment, he just stares at her. 

Tussled bottle-blonde hair, lopsided hem of her rumpled NASA T-shirt, a hint of sun-kissed collarbone and slightly parted lips; little movements of the air leaving her nose.

In a both defeated and flat voice, he says, “Yes.”

Her eyelids flutter as she inhales with an audible hitch of air. Purses her lips.

And something inside him slowly bursts, seeping foreign warmth into the veins as he watches her, something sweet and deep and cloying, something hitherto stymied and hazy yet so very—

“You should get some sleep,” Rose says abruptly, sitting up. Her voice is miraculously even except for a tiny croak. “I’ll obviously stay here with you, so that the nightmares don’t come back.”

He’s taken aback, to put it mildly. “But I thought—” 

She looks him straight in the eyes, looking defiant. “Doctor. You’re obviously having a moral dilemma here. Or … something. And I’m … I’m fine with whatever we are, alright? I’m fine with how we are now. I don’t care for it, as long as … I just don’t want you to feel so tormented all time time, yeah? I don’t want you to be so unhappy.” 

“I’m not,” he says thickly, “Haven’t been in a while. That’s the problem.”

She swallows, undeterred. “That’s _not_ a problem. And I don’t want you to have the nightmares either.”

“Well, I don’t sleep that often, so—”

“So I’ll stay with you, if you like,” she continues. “More often, I mean. Like this, just … being here. Whenever you’d like to sleep. I’d worry less, now that I know you have them, and maybe … you’d be better off? Maybe just a bit, just having someone to hug after a particularly nasty one ...”

Feeling as though his hearts would burst and unable to stand it any longer—he lunges forward and kisses her.

It’s dizzying. It’s _new_. It’s exactly as addictive as he’s feared it would be.

Rose is quiet for an overwhelmingly long moment. “But I’m fine with this, too,” she then says, shakily, her hands finding a way to his neck and hair. “Very fine.”

He pulls her closer. 

The new warmth keeps trickling over him. 

His hands are not shaking now. 

**Author's Note:**

> (title inspired by alt-j's new song 3ww)


End file.
